


A Little Unsteady (Hold Onto Me)

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: True Love or Something [14]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Gen, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, Shiro is the best brother, Siblings, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-13 02:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9103366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: Takashi Shirogane is nine years old when he holds his brother for the first time.“I’m here,” he’d whispered to his fussing baby brother, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”And Keith stopped crying. He didn’t laugh; he looked up at Shiro with big, skeptical eyes.  A challenge. Like this tiny person was saying ‘oh yeah, prove it’.And Shiro, newly nine years old, promised that he’d prove it.Shiro and Keith's childhood in moments.





	1. I Can Hold the Weight of Worlds (if that’s what you need)

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS, EVERYONE. YOU ARE ALL SO INSPIRING AND WONDERFUL. 
> 
> So a while back someone requested an angst fic. And I've had an idea kicking around the back of my head for a Keith and Shiro flashback fic more thoroughly addressing their past plus I've been itching to write some Shiro POV for a while...and thus this story was born. I'm sorry, I promise the fluffy Klance cuteness will be back soon, I just had to get this piece of the story out there. 
> 
> There will probably be a second part to this addressing Keith's years living with Shiro and Shiro's perspective on his baby brother as an adult. 
> 
> Also, if anyone cares, Shiro's theme song for this fic is definitely 'Unsteady' by the X Ambassadors. Keith's is 'Aliens Exist' by Blink 182 because I think I'm funny.

**I Can Hold the Weight of Worlds (if that’s what you need)**

**Six**

            Shiro’s parents get divorced when he’s six years old. He doesn’t really know what’s going on, just that there used to be a lot of shouting and now there’s just silence and a new kind of cold that isn’t on his skin, it’s _under_ it and no matter how many blankets he wraps around his shoulders like it’s not enough to make it go away.

            He remembers it clearly – the night he realized that it was over. His father was out on the patio, sitting on a wicker chair, elbows braced on his knees, his boots on his feet and a cigarette between his lips. His head was bowed over loosely clasped hands and for a moment Shiro – Takashi then. He used to just be Takashi, sometimes Taka if his mommy was feeling playful. He was small then. For a moment Takashi thought his daddy was praying like he’d seen people do on television.

            His father was staring out and away, up at the stars and Shiro remembers the exact way he looked. His father was so big to him, broad-shouldered and powerful. Quiet like a stone, like the earth, full of infinite patience and a kind of rumbling power. Shiro remembers the bright ember flaring at the end of his father’s cigarette, the way the weak light reflected off the panes of Shirogane’s face. (It was years before Shiro knew his father’s given name – he was always just ‘Shirogane’.) It made everything look grayscale, a world with the color subtracted, pared away until there was nothing left but a worn man and a bright orange ember.

            “Daddy?”

            Shirogane turned towards his son with old eyes, “Takashi. Come here.”

            Takashi approached his father, stood in front of him and allowed himself to be lifted onto his father’s knee.

            “Look at the stars, Takashi. What do you see?”

            Takashi thought long and hard about his answer. What to tell his daddy? What would make his daddy happy? He had looked so sad lately.

            But then he stopped himself. Wait. What was Daddy asking? What did he _really_ see when he looked at the stars?

            “Somewhere new,” Takashi finally said, decisive and hopeful at the same time, “Someplace we’ve never been.”

            “Do you think anything’s out there, Takashi?” Shirogane just sounded so _hopeless_ and Shiro remembers this conversation even now because of its surreality; its mystery and its finality. It’s the sort of conversation lost far deep in the murky past that returns to mind only when one is old enough to finally understand what it meant.

            “Mommy thinks so,” Takashi told his father with all the innocent honesty of a child, “But I think it’s too far away for us.”

            “What do you mean?” And it’s only now that Shiro understands that tone in Shirogane’s voice, that searching sound that meant he was looking for answers in a world that had none – and he knew it.

            “Well, if it’s out there it’s _out there_ ,” six-year-old Shiro struggled with his words, struggled to communicate something bigger than his vocabulary, “Mommy’s not going to find it _here_.”

            Shirogane sighed and extinguished his cigarette. “I don’t think she’s going to find what she’s looking for here either.” He sighed and Shiro doesn’t know for sure but he’s pretty sure his father watched the stars for a few minutes more after that until finally he said “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go back inside.”

            That’s when Takashi Shirogane knew it was over. His mother was going away to find what she was looking for.

…

**Eight**

            Takashi Shirogane is eight years old the summer he comes to live with his mother and finds out she’s pregnant. At first she’s throwing up all the time and Shiro’s scared – he doesn’t know what to do and what if his mom is _dying_ or something? And the small, vicious part of him, the part of him that can’t quite forgive her for an empty house back in New York with his father and him bouncing off the walls like lost marbles, says it serves her right, but he crushes that meanness before it can spread to the rest of him.

            Instead he holds back her hair and heats up chicken noodle soup on the hotplate because the RV’s stove doesn’t always work right and goes to the Quick Mart and buys as much 7-up and ginger ale as his skinny arms can carry.

            Once he calls his dad in a panic, asking what to do, how to make it alright again. And he has never forgotten that conversation either.

            “Dad, I don’t know what to do, Mom’s throwing up all the time and maybe she’s dying? I don’t know, we’re in an RV and I don’t know who to ask for help.”

            A sigh on the other end of the line and Shiro knows today, now that he’s older, now that he’s Shiro and not Takashi, the depth of the weariness, the sadness in that sigh. Because his father has never stopped loving his mother, despite it being impossible and hopeless because they’re all wrong for each other and they will never ever work. Shiro heard a lyric in a song once: ‘sometimes the one you want is not the one you need’ and he had to stop for a moment as it rang through his head, the perfect expression and explanation.

            “Take your mom to the drugstore and tell her to pick out what she needs,” Shirogane said, the growl of his voice like stones worn down, made rough by time and weather.

            And that’s what Takashi-sometimes-Shiro did.

            He forgets things sometimes, there are whole chunks of his time in Afghanistan that he’s pretty sure aren’t coming back, but he remembers this.

            He remembers when his mom tried to tell him he was going to have a baby brother or sister and burst into tears halfway through. He remembers sitting on the kitchen floor of a crappy RV with his mom, hanging onto each other, hugging and crying and he’s still not sure if it’s for joy or sadness.

…

**Nine**

            Takashi Shirogane is nine years old when he holds his brother for the first time.

            Keith is so tiny – even though he’s six months old by the time Shiro sees him for the first time. Shiro can’t imagine him tinier, even though his mom sent pictures of her and him in the hospital, when Keith was first born. Keith has huge, strange eyes, blue and purple like the night sky. Their mom – and it’s _their_ mom now, they _share_ her – says they’ll probably change when he gets older, turn a more normal color, but Shiro doesn’t think so. Something in Shiro says this is a starchild, a baby born for the night sky.

            Keith’s eyes don’t change color. They’re the same night-sky purple-blue-black at twenty-six that they were at six months.

            Shiro was the one to name Keith – just like he named himself. He’s Shiro now, everyone at school calls him that and it’s only his father who calls him Takashi these days. His mom throws all sorts of nicknames his way and in his darker, more irrational moments Shiro wonders if it’s because she’s forgotten his name in the face of aliens and Keith. But he knows that’s just the way she is. It’s her way of showing love.

            But Shiro named Keith. His mom asked him if he wanted to help look for a name for his new sibling when he went home at the end of the previous summer and Shiro threw himself into the project, researching name after name, quizzing his friends on what names were easy to make fun of, what names lent themselves to crappy nicknames, what names were hard to spell, what names would get your butt kicked. His brother wasn’t having a name like that. His brother needed a good, solid, un-make-fun-able name.

            He sent his mom the final list and she picked one. He has a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t nearly as careful about her picking process as he was. He’s pretty sure she just liked the way Keith Kogane sounded.

            (He’s not upset they have different last names, his brother and him, he’s not, he’s not, he’s NOT. He says that to himself a lot, when he’s feeling particularly disconnected, adrift and far away from the strange little world here in the desert.)

            Shiro remembers holding Keith for the first time like it happened yesterday, like he just saw it in IMAX 3D, like he’s liable to experience it all over again despite the fact that his brother is in his twenties now and miles away.

            “I’m here,” he’d whispered to his fussing baby brother, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”

            And Keith stopped crying. He didn’t laugh; he looked up at Shiro with big, skeptical eyes. A challenge. Like this tiny person was saying ‘oh yeah, prove it’.

            And Shiro, newly nine years old, promised that he’d prove it.

…

**Intermediary**

            Ten, eleven, twelve and thirteen pass much the same way. Keith is tiny but precocious and their mom is loving and lovable but absent-minded. When Shiro is nine he makes the mistake of innocently asking where Keith is going in the winter – isn’t he going with his own dad?

            She gets very quiet in a way his mother rarely does and says, without looking up from the gadget she’s fiddling with, “No. Keith stays with me,” and she finally glances up to smile at Shiro’s brother, but it’s strained, “Isn’t that right, Keithy-baby? Just us two out here in the wild, wild world?”

            Shiro tries not to be jealous.

            It’s surprisingly hard. He doesn’t _like_ living like this, but it would be nice if his mom wanted him around all the time too.

            But time passes and Shiro never learns much about Keith’s father beyond “Takashi, drop it,” and he finds himself teaching his brother to read by accident. He sits on the rickety lawn chairs outside in the desert sun and reads National Geographic with Keith on his lap while their mom works or sleeps off a night of work and one day four-year-old Keith starts pointing out words on the pages, telling twelve-year-old Shiro what they are.

            They read together after that.

            Shiro takes Keith everywhere with him in the summers. He’s like a good luck charm or a toddling security blanket. He’s smart and chatty and doesn’t always make sense. Shiro worries about him. He teaches him basic math with rocks and sticks and equations drawn in the dirt. He makes sure there’s always food in the house within easy reach of hungry hands. He wonders about his mom. She’s leaner, he cheekbones sharp, her hair messy and her eyes bright. He thinks she’s happy but he doesn’t know if she’s healthy.

            Some days he’s sick of it. He’s sick of dealing with them. He’s sick of Mom and her aliens and Keith and his nonsense words and he hides – in his room if they’re in a house with multiple bedrooms, in the loft over the driver’s seat if they’re in an RV, in the bathroom if neither is possible. He hides and he goes on the internet and he makes himself sick with envy looking at emails from his friends talking about summer camps and neighborhood picnics and Boy Scouts.

            He makes himself so miserable he can’t think straight and he gets mad and a couple of times he leaves, just wanders the desert and kicks rocks and yells at cacti.

            He remembers when he stopped doing that. Twelve years old and short for his age with floppy hair that’s just getting floppier since Mom left her love of cutting hair behind in last summer. He was just so _angry_ when he got there. He was angry they weren’t in the same place as last year. He was angry that he wasn’t normal – that when the other kids at school asked him what his summer plans were he had to say ‘going to stay with my mom and baby brother in the middle of fucking nowhere’ instead of something cool. At least he knew better than to talk about the alien thing.

            He was mad at his mom for being nutty and he was mad at Keith for being a stupid _baby_ and he found himself back in the desert again. He still isn’t sure how long he stormed through the scrub, he just remembers hearing a tiny, squeaky-mouse “oof” behind him and turning around to see four-year-old Keith laid out flat on his stomach, silent tears trickling down his face as he tried to push his tiny body back upright on scraped hands and knees. There was dirt on his face and dust all through his clothes and bits of plant tangled in his hair.

            Shiro, yanked out of self-pity like a comedian dragged off the stage in an old cartoon, raced back to where his baby brother sat in the dirt.

            “Hey, hey, don’t cry. Don’t cry. What we you doing out here?” Shiro demanded, wiping the saltwater and grime off Keith’s face with his t-shirt.

            “I – hic – was – hic – following – sniffle – you!”

            Shiro’s own eyes filled with tears and he dragged his brother – so small, fine-boned like a bird – onto his lap and cuddled him close. “Shh, why were you doing that, dummy?”

            Keith’s little hands convulsed against his chest, gripping his shit tight, “I thought you were leaving again.”

            Shiro buried his face in Keith’s soft hair, “I’m not leaving yet; I’m here, kiddo. I’m here.”

            Shiro didn’t go charging off into the desert again after that. Keith doesn’t remember that moment, he was four, but Shiro can never forget a tiny face covered in dirt and tears and a tiny bit of blood saying “I was following you.”

…

**Fourteen**

            When Takashi Shirogane is fourteen his father remarries.

            He gets to be in the ceremony, he’s Shirogane’s best man, ahead of all his military buddies and that makes Shiro proud, but while the woman is nice and he kids aren’t too objectionable, he spends the whole ceremony staring vacantly into space and imagining all the things his mom would be saying under her breath, trying to make him laugh as the preacher drones on.

            When he gets to the desert that summer Keith is watching him closely, purple-blue-black eyes narrowed suspiciously. And Keith refuses to admit he remembers the conversation that followed Shiro’s return that summer but Shiro didn’t forget.

            Six year old Keith folded his arms on the chipped formica of their current kitchen table, steepling his fingers and probably trying to look like the businessmen and CEOs he’d seen on tv in gas stations and rest stops. “Your dad got married.”

            “Yeah,” Shiro answered easily. He knows Keith, knows how his brother can work things up in his head, how wound up he gets. The only way to counter Keith’s neurosis is with an attitude of extreme casual-ness.

            “She has children.”

            “Yeah. From her first marriage.”

            “They’re younger than you.” And this was the part where Keith began to crumble. He was, after all, only six, “And they’re not as weird as me.”

            Shiro tried to refute that statement but Keith just steamrolled over him.

            “And you’ll see them more and they won’t actually be your real siblings so you won’t have to share your dad or your mom with them. And they’re older than me but younger than you so you’ll be closer in age and have more to talk about,” Keith wasn’t looking at him anymore. His eyes were fixed on the tabletop and his fingers had fallen out of their steeple. The last bit of his statement was whispered to the tabletop, “You’ll like them better than me.”

            Oh shit. Shiro had to stop this before it could get too bad, turn into a monster he couldn’t control. “No way in hell,” he said bluntly, not even caring if Mom heard him say a bad word to his kid brother, “No way in hell could any kid ever be as cool and as special and as awesome as you. No way in hell.”

            Keith looked up at him with huge eyes and Shiro walked around the table to hug him tight, “You’re my brother, idiot. You’re automatically better than any crappy step-siblings. Haven’t you read any fairy-tales. The stepsiblings are always secretly evil.”

            Keith had giggled at that and the hug had devolved into wrestling, Shiro theatrically letting his baby brother defeat him and sit on his chest to celebrate his victory.

…

**Fifteen**

            When Takashi Shirogane is fifteen he goes off to camp for the first month of summer. He figures Keith and mom will be fine on their own. Keith’s seven; he’s barely going to notice the difference. They can have their summer, just…later. After Shiro goes to camp. After Shiro gets this one thing.

            Shiro loves camp, he really does. But at night, when he’s not running around with the other kids, when he’s not learning new stuff and messing around and having fun, when it’s just him and the wilderness outside his cabin…he wonders. He wonders what Mom and Keith are doing. He wonders if Mom remembered to cook dinner or if they’re just eating poptarts again. He wonders if Keith’s read the books he sent him for Christmas. He wonders what Keith thinks of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He misses his little brother when he’s left alone to think.

            Camp ends and he joins the alien squad in the desert in July and Keith refuses to speak to him.

            When Shiro finally corners him and demands to know what’s going on Keith stares at him with the cold, hard eyes of a kid who has begun to realize that this vagabond life isn’t the way normal people live. “You left and didn’t come back,” he says and gives him as hard a shove as he can before marching past to help Mom move surveillance equipment.

            Shiro spends the rest of the summer trying to teach Keith to trust him again but it feels a little disingenuous. They both know where he’s going in the fall.

…

**Sixteen**

            His stepmother keeps trying to _bond_ with him. Shiro wishes she would stop, but doesn’t really have anyone to complain to about it and conversely doesn’t have anyone to get advice on how to deal with it. All of his Dad’s military buddies just snort and shake their heads when he grumbles about her hovering and her careful, dainty questions about his mother and ‘her son’ and ‘her _work_ , out there’.

            (Shiro hates, hates, _hates_ that everyone seems to think of him and Keith as belonging in separate categories – ‘her son’ and ‘his son’. Shiro wants to shout at people sometimes, “I can hear what you don’t say! I’m not stupid!” and “You know I’m the crazy lady’s kid too? So if you’re gonna say it JUST FUCKING SAY IT” and “shut up and let me punch you”.)

            He doesn’t want to talk about it with his school friends, talking about it would mean talking about his mom and the conversations that dance _around_ her and her problematic self. His father just wants them all to be happy, to get along. He wants something good and pure and Shiro feels bad sometimes because what his father wants he will never have, not all the way and it’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just life.

            Keith might understand\

if he was older, but he’s eight and halfway convinced that dads are mythical creatures.

            So when Stella the too-nice stepmother tries too hard, (“You don’t _have_ to go out there, to the desert, you know. Not this year. Your father really has full custody; she doesn’t have to get you at all. That man, he’s just too nice. You could stay here; do normal things with us. Maybe we’ll do a couple nice family camping trips.”) Shiro snaps. He doesn’t shout at her but he packs everything and leaves two weeks early instead of taking a few weeks between the end of school and leaving for Mom and Keith.

            “You’re early,” Keith said when Shiro showed up, frazzled and wide-eyed with a duffle bag and a tight grip on the steering wheel. Keith’s hair was too long again, hanging in his eyes, cowlicks everywhere.

            “Stepmom wanted me to stay with them the whole summer,” Shiro told him tersely, like that was an explanation.

            “Uh-huh,” Keith squinted at him, like he was trying to solve a math problem in his head.

            “So I decided to leave early.”

            “I don’t get it.”

            “You don’t have to.”

            And it was a pretty good summer. Shiro, in a fit of teenage pique, snapped a shot of him with Keith on his back and his mom squished in beside him, all of them making funny faces at the camera, and printed out three copies. One for mom to stick to her dashboard, one for Shiro and one to tuck into an envelope to send back ‘home’.

            “You’re very passive-aggressive.”

            “You’re _eight_ , where did you hear that?”

            “I hang out with really neurotic people.”

            “How did you learn was neurotic means?”

            Keith just shrugs.

…

**Seventeen**

            Shiro feels trapped, like he’s running out of air, like there never was any air. Not here, squished between a rock and a hard place and getting crushed by both, but so slowly he doesn’t know it until he’s gasping for his next breath.

            That summer is good because it get him out of his father’s house and away from his stepmother’s querulous, fretful questions about his Future Plans (their relationship has never been the same, not since the summer before and his early departure and The Picture). That summer is good because Keith is nine and knows the desert like the back of his hand and isn’t liable to hurt himself and they range all over. They see more of the desert than Shiro thought possible. The place seems infinite, gorgeous; it leaves Shiro hungry. It makes him want to see more. It gives him the same feeling the stars used to, an empty spot in his stomach, growling, demanding to be fed.

            That summer is bad because his mother is driving him insane.

            “Is Keith even in school?”

            “We’re homeschooling.”

            “But are you teaching him anything?”

            “He’s learning.”

            “Is he? Because from where I’m standing you’re just letting him wander the desert unsupervised and calling it math, science, English, history, and PE!”

            Shiro is glad he brought his homework for next semester with him. Keith is too young for calculus and Chaucer, but he’s bright, and the books give Shiro an idea of where to begin. He teaches Keith algebra on a McDonald’s napkin. He takes his car and drives them to national parks and tries to remember the right history. They find a dinky little library stranded in the middle of a dusty town and clean out the shelves.

            It’s good enough for now.

            “Mom, there isn’t any food.”

            “There are poptarts. Probably some ramen. Don’t worry, babydoll, there’s plenty of food.”

            “Real food. Mom. Where is the real food?”

            “What is real, anyway?”

            “What the fuck do you two _eat_ when I’m not here?”

            Shiro teaches Keith the basics of the kitchen – Keith is better at algebra than he is at manning a spatula.

            Shiro goes back to his dad’s house with sand in his hair and an itch under his skin.

…

**Eighteen**

He gets a letter from his mother.

            _Takashi, honey,_

_We’re on the trail of something big and we’re just not going to be setting up camp anywhere for more than a few days. You probably shouldn’t come this summer, you’ll never find us, we’re just all over the place, sweetie._

_Keith and I love you, gumdrop,_

_Mom_

            That’s the last straw. If his mom doesn’t want him around, if his stepmother doesn’t want _him,_ then fine. He’ll just say ‘fuck it’ and leave. Go do something he wants for a change. Fuck it all.

            There are billions of people in the world. For the first time, Takashi Shirogane just lets himself be one of the billions. He stops trying and surrenders. He takes off traveling and doesn’t stop until he’s nineteen and joining the military because it turns out wandering the world doesn’t pay as well as it used to.

…

**Interlude**

            There are holes in his memory where Afghanistan used to be. He remembers whole chunks of it, in bright, horrifying Technicolor. But that’s the strange thing about brain damage. It’s unpredictable.

            He remembers the explosion. He remembers thinking about how loud it was. How it didn’t seem like it should be quite that loud. In the split second between ignition and agony he remembers thinking, nonsensically, that someone should turn the tv down, the sound effects were too noisy.

…

**Twenty-Two**

            He wakes up in the hospital. Everything is black and white now; there’s a good chance he’ll never see color again. Keith, a gangly teenager, still small for his age, all angles and grace, is curled up on his bed at his feet, head resting on Shiro’s shins like a cat. His hair is still too long and too messy.

            Even when it’s all gone to hell, it’s comforting to have his family near.

…

**Twenty-Three**

            When Takashi Shirogane is twenty-three years old his mother dies in a freak accident. Keith Kogane is only fifteen. He spends three months in the foster system while Shiro shouts, pleads, bullies, negotiates, and aggressively stares down every barrier between himself and getting custody of his brother.

            Family stays together. Leave no man behind.

            _“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here._ ”

 


	2. Screaming for Consequence, Bleeding for More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is in a group home in Phoenix, Arizona for months before Shiro finally finds him. 
> 
> Keith Kogane, age fifteen, angry and alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOODNESS, GUYS, THANK YOU. YOUR REVIEWS FOR THIS FIC HAVE UTTERLY ASTONISHED ME. 
> 
> Seriously, I was like "I'll just post this little bit of background, I bet everyone will skip it because it's just backstory and that's okay"...and then I woke up the next morning to SO MANY AWESOME COMMENTS. You are magical, guys. I'm so amazed by you. 
> 
> ...and I'm going to reward your awesomeness with EVEN MORE ANGST because I'm terrible. I lied about this fic being two parts. I sat down to write part two and ended up writing a Kieth POV Interlude set between parts one and two. So we'll be back to Shiro in the next chapter, but for this chapter we're following fifteen-year-old Keith. 
> 
> Um. I'm not sure if I should warn for this? But the foster system is discussed, as is bullying and some non-specific fighting between teenagers? You can skip this chapter if you want to avoid that but it is very vague and non-graphic. Proceed however you wish. 
> 
> The chapter title is from 'Radio' by He Is We, which is Keith's theme song for this chapter.

**Screaming for Consequence, Bleeding for More**

**Fifteen**

Keith is in a group home in Phoenix, Arizona for months before Shiro finally finds him. The house is old but clean, a ranch done all over in cracked terracotta tile. There isn’t a pool, but the neighborhood has a small one with rusted beach furniture that used to be white.

            Keith hates foster care. He hates the blank look on his social worker’s face – the look that says ‘Fuck, what’s this one’s name again?’. He hates the other kids, the way they hover way too close; ask too many questions. He hates the check that comes every few weeks. The check that says ‘this is how much it’s worth to the state of Arizona for you to take Keith Kogane off our hands’.

            He read the check once – stole it from the mailbox. He didn’t want to cash it, although he considered it. He’s good at imitating other people’s handwriting. The times he was in real school he forged his mom’s signature on a couple of field trip forms when she forgot to sign them. He erased her signature a couple of times too – he didn’t want to go on every field trip. He hates school buses, they’re small and loud and full of people. He likes the desert, the emptiness. It’s what he knows.

            But he wanted to know what was on that check, he wanted to know, in dollars and cents, how much he was worth to these people.

            He wishes he didn’t know now. Because he hasn’t forgotten, he knows what he’s worth and it’s not much.

            (He almost, _almost_ cashed that fucking check, because it was his goddamn money, he could pay for his own _upkeep_ – but then he wondered what Shiro would do. And Shiro wouldn’t cash the check. Shiro was a good guy.)

            Keith wants to be like Shiro so badly, but he’s pretty sure he’ll never be.

            Keith wonders if Shiro will come for him. He’d promised. At the funeral they’d stood apart from the other mourners – a motley collection of other alien ‘experts’ who all knew Keith by name and Shiro by reputation (Shiro the good son, Shiro the far away son, Shiro the son everyone wished they had). Shiro had worn a suit; black, cut to emphasize his height and his broad shoulders, black and white like his hair, the angry pink-red stripe of scar tissue across his face the only splash of color on him. Keith had found himself mesmerized by the sharp, defiant white of his brother’s shirt. The way it stood out in the middle of the dusty red-brown-gold desert – challenging nature to sully its brightness.  

            Keith had worn a black t-shirt and jeans because he didn’t have any nice clothes and Shiro was a foot taller than him with fifty pounds of muscle Keith had never had. At least the black t-shirt was long-sleeved. That made it feel a little more formal at least.

            (He considered wearing one of the alien t-shirts his mom had bought him on their last Roswell trip, he felt like that would have made her happy, him wearing her shirt at her funeral – but he thought it might disappoint Shiro and he didn’t want his brother to be ashamed of him.)

            At the funeral his brother promised he’d come for him, he’d find a way to bring him home. This was only temporary.

            Keith’s not sure he believes that anymore. Not when he knows how much he’s worth.

            Two of the other teens at the group home ransacked his stuff his first week there. They found all of his mom’s notebooks, the ones he stole from the Institute and hid in his duffle, a little piece of Mom to carry with him until Shiro could find him. They’d called the other kids over, their voices sharp, cracking sounds and low, mean snorts and Keith thinks of the coyotes howling in the desert and the herds of javelinas making their way across the stones and sand as the sun went down whenever he sees them all swarming together.

            They’d tossed the notebooks back and forth, flipping through them and laughing, laughing, laughing, like broken records or wild animals. They threw loose pages around, not noticing when photos and hand-drawn maps fell to the floor and crunched and crumpled under heavy feet.

            Keith saw red.

            That was the first time he got his nose broken.

            He takes solace in the fact that it was him against five of them and they all came away as bloody as he did. Keith has a lot of experience fighting. Keith has a lot of experience at being the new kid, the weird kid, the kid who believes in aliens but doesn’t know who Santa Claus is.

            He gathers the notebooks up in the wake of the fight, and puts them back together as best he can. He doesn’t cry because you don’t cry in front of other people. That way they know you’re weak, they know they can hurt you.

            His face hurts for a week, even after his foster-mother pops his nose back into alignment. He’s pretty sure it’s going to heal crooked. Both his eyes bruise up and his split lip takes a while to heal too. Sleeping is painful, there’s always something new and aching to roll on top of.

            But he grins a bloody grin at whoever gets anywhere near him or his stuff after that and it’s worth it.

            He hides the notebooks, though. They won’t find them again.

            School sucks, he’s the new kid who either knows too much or not enough because he’s been living with rogue physicists for fifteen years and reading everything he can find at every library they come to, but a basic understanding of string theory and an encyclopedic knowledge of Charles Dickens isn’t going to help him pass a standardized test.

            He remembers the first day of classes – basic biology because technically he never took it. The teacher wanted to meet with him before class.

            “Mr. Kogane, what do you know about Biology I?”

            “I’ve read _Origin of the Species_.”

            “I’m sure you have, Mr. Kogane – ”

            “No, I have.”

            “I never said you didn’t.”

            “Your doubt was implied.”

            “ _Mr. Kogane,_ I think you need to adjust your attitude. You’re behind in nearly every subject – ”

            “That’s not true. I’m on a collegiate reading level – I’ve read more books than your library _contains_. I’ve been to every national park in the southwest and there are a _lot_ of them. I understand _string theory_ , don’t tell me I’m stupid,” Keith was snarling on the last words, fists clenched tight at his sides, face and ribs aching from another fight back at the group home. His mother’s notebooks are safe in his backpack, in a hidden compartment with zip-ties holding the zippers together. He’s not taking any chances.

            “ _Mr. Kogane_ ,” the teacher’s voice cracked like a whip and the fluorescent lights reflected off his balding skull like searchlights, “Watch your tone with me. This isn’t the scrubland and I’m not some crackpot with an online degree.”

            “My mother graduated from Columbia,” Keith growled. He knew; he’d found her diploma shoved into a shoebox under her bed once. She’d laughed – his mother had a beautiful laugh, like sunshine or a cool breeze, it made everything better. _“Oh, that thing. My years ‘prostrate to the higher mind’. Oh yeah, that’s a quote from an Indigo Girls song – I’ve got the cassette somewhere…you need to hear this, it’ll speak to you, babydoll. Put that thing back, let’s listen to some music.”_

            His mom had never much cared for paper and names.

            His biology teacher sighed, “You can do school the easy way or hard way, Mr. Kogane. And as of right now you’re trying to do it the hard way. Trust me when I say that you won’t get anywhere doing that. I’ll see you in class.”

            He knew he was in the kiddie class. Everyone else was a freshman, a year younger than him. The only good thing about it was they didn’t know who he was – they didn’t know he was basically being held back.

            The only good thing about school was Advanced English. He liked his teacher. Ms. Dunham was young and energetic and would get really excited when they got to her favorite books in the syllabus. He had study hall in her room and she was the only reason he did any of his other homework at all.

            “I’ve got a book here I think you’ll like, Keith,” she’d say, “But I can’t let you borrow it until you finish that algebra homework you’re ignoring.”

            “I already know algebra. My brother taught me when I was like, nine.”

            “Then it shouldn’t take you that long to finish it. Then you can borrow this book.” Then she’d hold the book up and he’d see the cover and he’d be hooked. He’d want to know what was hiding under the dust jacket, where he could escape to next, what world he could hide in because this one sucked.

            And he’d do the damn algebra homework.

            But the only class he tried in was Advanced English.

            He still has an essay he wrote for that class – it was during one of their writing units. They’d had to pick a book that spoke to them on a personal level and write a creative nonfiction piece illustrating the connection between the book and their worldview. His was titled _Hester Prynne’s Son_ and it had come back to him with a giant red ‘A’ on the front page. He doesn’t show it to Shiro until eleven years later, and his invincible, perfect brother cries when he reads it.

            Keith isn’t sure what life would be like in the group home if he wasn’t grounded. Because he can’t remember a time he isn’t on some form of restriction. He doesn’t really care. Words like ‘restriction’ and ‘grounded’ are just words to him. Fictional, just something he saw on tv once. He leaves the house anyway, wanders the neighborhood with his backpack over his shoulder with his mother’s notes, his wallet, and all his books in it. Just in case he ever decides not to wander back one day.

            But he always returns. Because he always remembers at the last minute that if he keeps walking and just vanishes into the night Shiro will never be able to find him.

            In the beginning Keith knows his brother will come for him.

            In the middle Keith thinks his brother will come for him.

            In the end Keith hopes his brother will come for him.

            He finds a radio in the trash one day. It looks just like the crappy old radio/cassette player his mother carried with her everywhere. Battery operated and probably as old as him, she would duct tape it to their kitchen counter or their dashboard or carabineer-clip it to their tent. It went with them everywhere, and when they couldn’t get a signal they’d pop a tape in and listen to that. Her diploma she shoved in a shoebox but her radio is front and center in every memory Keith has of her.

            The radio died with her too.

            Keith rescues its sister from the trash and fixes it in his room – using his dwindling pocket money (he hasn’t gotten an allowance since the last time his mom gave him a hundred dollars and told him to make it last) to buy the right parts and some thrift-store tapes. He guards it jealously and a few well-placed punches buys it exemption from the other kids’ quest to fuck up as much of his stuff as possible.

            (Keith has learned the law of the jungle – hit first, hit fast, and run away before they can hit back.)

            He carries it with him when he wanders around and plays old favorites on low volume – Johnny Cash and Journey and Joan Jett. He likes ‘Bad Reputation’ a lot and he and Shiro used to sing ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ loud and off-key with their mom as they drove around the desert when Keith was still little and Shiro wasn’t absent or broken.

            Social Services makes him go to weekly counseling appointments. The therapist tries to get him to talk and Keith pulls out a book (always something heavy and impressive from the library, because he’s Making a Point.) He likes bringing ‘Tale of Two Cities’ or ‘Les Miserables’ and watching the therapist’s eyebrows climb up her face when she sees the new 900-page monstrosity he pulls out of his bag. He brought Jane Eyre once because he had a craving for Bronte and the library didn’t have anything longer. He and the therapist had a great conversation about Jane’s autonomy as a character. The next week he ruined it by bringing the Oedipus trilogy and daring the therapist to bring up Fruedian slips.

            He’s not here to make friends.

            He’s started looking like a cross between a homeless person, a member of an eighties hair band and a less-than-successful teen vigilante. Between his thrift store clothes, his too-long hair, and constant collage of bruises and contusions he’s quite the sight. He can’t really bring himself to do much about it; if Shiro shows up he wants him to see the evidence.

            _Look what’s happened to me. You did this. You should have come back for me sooner._

            It’s mean and petty but Keith is _miserable_ and _alone_ and he wants his mom. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t a ‘normal’ life, maybe he doesn’t get things other kids his age do like the point of reality tv and the reasoning behind speed limits. But it was his life. _His._

            This is just something he’s borrowing for now.

            “I’m not here for good,” he snapped at Ms. Dunham one day, “So don’t go getting invested in my future or something.”

            “You should stop getting hit in the face,” she said, “You’re too smart for brain damage at fifteen.”

            “My brother’s brain damaged and he’s fine,” Keith snapped because he wanted to fight with someone and she was being too nice to him. She needed to learn.

            “Then he was very lucky,” she said; tone even, a single brow raised, “Very, very lucky. Lighting doesn’t strike twice. Don’t assume you’ll have your brother’s life.”

            “My mom got struck by lightning,” Keith said and it was a challenge and a truth because he was feeling twisted-up inside, like he might explode, go super-nova and disappear into a cloud of stardust.

            Ms. Dunham just looked at him and waited.

            “She was driving out to one of her observation posts one night and there was a storm coming in. Her car got struck by lighting. It crashed. They don’t know if the lighting killed her or the crash. Or maybe they do and I’m a kid so they won’t tell me. My brother probably knows,” he looked up, the fury once boiling in his stomach changing into something colder and flatter, deader, “My brother said he’d come get me. I’m waiting for him.”

            Ms. Dunham had just nodded, “Okay, Keith.”

            Keith nodded back, sharp and jerky and went back to reading _Richard III._

…

            Of course Shiro finally arrives when Keith’s in the middle of a fight with his housemates. It’s only three of the other teens but they’re all bigger than him and the only reason he’s not a smear on the carpet is because he’s madder and meaner than all of them combined, not to mention cornered.

            It takes Shiro’s battlefield command voice barking out, “STOP,” to get them all to freeze.

            And there’s Takashi Shirogane, with his shock of white hair and that scar on his face Keith’s hasn’t had the time to get used to and his squared-off military bearing. He looks like a hero, the kind of guy who wins battles against impossible odds and expects only the best from his crew. He’s just as tall and broad-shouldered as ever. Keith remembers when Shiro used to be scrawny for his age, awkward and dorky, singing old country hits with their mom in the front seat of her truck.

            “All of you,” Shiro snaps and he is pure military machine, “Settle down. Now.”

            Keith’s social worker is standing beside his brother, chewing her lip and looking at Keith with narrowed eyes that say ‘you’ve embarrassed me’ and Keith narrows his eyes right back at her because who the fuck cares if he’s embarrassed _her_? He doesn’t look at Shiro. Shiro abandoned him. And because he really does care if he’s embarrassed Shiro.

            “What’s going on?” Keith’s foster mother comes running in, putting on earrings as she goes. Her makeup’s half-done; she should be leaving for work in thirty minutes. It’s an in-service day at school and Keith and his housemates are trapped in the house because they’re all on restriction. The fight started because Keith was getting ready to sneak out again and his “siblings” took exception to his casual disobedience (and the fact that they didn’t have the guts to do what he did).

            “ _Kogane_ ,” she snaps, “Of course it’s you.”

            And Keith can’t really argue with her, he does fight a lot, he’s always covered in bruises and he thinks the skin of his knuckles might be permanently split. But he grins at her with bloody teeth because his heartbeat is still pumping loud in his veins, adrenaline making his nerves spark like blown fuses and wildness running through his core, “Oh, yeah, a three-on-one fight’s definitely all my fault. Please, focus all the attention on me, my shrink says that’s why I ‘act out’ anyway.”

            “You’ve been reading private files again,” she huffs and Keith shrugs despite the fact it jostles the shoulder he messed up the other day.

            “It was raining. Couldn’t walk all the way to the library. Needed something else to read.”

            One of the other kids mutters something nasty under his breath and Keith snarls at him, baring those bloody teeth again, ignoring the flare of pain from his split lip.

            “Keith,” and that’s Shiro. His voice is gentler, softer, and his eyes are sad. Keith isn’t sure if he wants to scream or cry.

            _You left me/take me back/you left me/take me back/you left me_

“What are you doing?” and Shiro sounds so reasonable, so sad and confused, like he fundamentally can’t understand what Keith’s doing here. Like what he’s seeing is making _him_ sad.

            Keith’s eyes fill with tears but he forces them back. Never cry in front of others. The law of the jungle. Hit first and run.

            “I learned how to fight my own battles,” he says, tight and sharp.

            “Oh Keith,” Shiro sounds absolutely heartbroken and then Keith’s being hugged for the first time in months and his whole body locks up, system overload, he doesn’t know what to do.

            So he lets himself cry silently into his brother’s shirt, the tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes like thieves in the night, stealthy and sneaking.  

            “You’re coming back to New York with me. Get your stuff. I’m here,” Shiro tells him and it’s half a promise half a command and all home again. He repeats it again and again, still hugging Keith tight like he used to when they were kids even though he told him to get his stuff, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, kiddo.”

            “Okay,” Keith whispers, “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

            He’s going home with his brother. He’s getting out of here.


	3. Fight When You Feel Like Flying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first year is an adjustment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOODNESS, GUYS, YOUR AMAZING REVIEWS... Your reviews have blown me away, truly. You are so insightful and I truly appreciate your support for this fic. 
> 
> This chapter tentatively concludes this flashback fic, although many of the themes brought up here will reappear in later fics in this series as Shiro writes his book and I might revisit this era in the boys' lives if I find myself inspired. 
> 
> Fair warning, some bullying is mentioned though not explicitly depicted, some OCs are assholes. I honestly don't know if I should warn for it, but I figured better to be safe than sorry. Read what you wish to!

**Shiro**

**Twenty-Three**

 

Shiro can't stop looking at Keith, cataloguing his every detail and wishing, wishing wishing there was something he could have done different, something he could have done right. Something that would stop the bleeding and un-break a nose that's obviously been broken at least twice. Twice in three months.

Christ.

Shiro closes his eyes and hangs on and tries not to count ribs as he says over and over again "I'm here, I'm here," like a mantra now because it's lost all value as a promise and Shiro hates that.

There's a steadily spreading wet spot in the middle of Shiro's t-shirt and it rattles him to the core.

He hasn't seen Keith cry since he was four years old.

_"I was following you!"_

Goddammit.

He bends down and presses a kiss to the top of his kid brother's head like he's five instead of fifteen because Keith, tough, dependable, smart Keith, Keith the kid who was holding off three other teenagers, all bigger than him (god, Shiro can't get that sight out of his head, his little brother with his lips drawn back in a snarl, clenching his fists and bracing himself for a blow that doesn't land but might have if Shiro hadn't shown up, if Shiro was any slower). Keith is shaking like a leaf. Nothing big or obvious, just a slight live-wire tremor running across his skin.

Shiro feels like he's spent most of his life worrying about this kid. He probably has.

"Come on," he orders again; his voice is rough, "Get your stuff, we're leaving."

Keith tenses and pulls away, his face shuttering in a way Shiro has never seen. He just closes down, no expression, no emotion; his eyes, the color of space, purple-blue-black and infinite, a blank void.

"Sure," Keith says and his eyes are bloodshot but aren't wet anymore. Around them the hyena-pack has gone silent, three teens with bloodied faces staring at him with wary, feral eyes, their foster mother with her half-done makeup looking caught somewhere between indignation and confusion. Shiro can see where this would have gone if he hadn't shown up. She would have barreled in and shouted at Keith and shooed the rest of them away, shouted some more, thrown on some more restrictions and the minute she left the room Keith would have been out the window like a desert wind.

The social worker's lips are pressed together in a hard line and her fingers are tight on her briefcase. "This was obviously not a good fit," she says into the silence, a verbal bandaid; a hasty patch job meant to soothe the building tension without having to address it.

Shiro stares her down and she looks back with tired eyes. "Obviously," he says coldly because he can't muster up the energy to play nice anymore. He's tired too.

"He started it, y'know," one of the teens mutters.

Shiro looks at him and the kid slouches even harder, like bad posture makes him look tough.

"The freak, he started it," the boy accuses.

Shiro stares at him, "You think I give a fuck about that when I just saw three guys corner my brother and beat the shit out of him?" Shiro doesn't raise his voice, doesn't even emphasize the profanity, keeps his tone flat and even and edged like a blade, "and for what? What did any of you get out of that?" He shakes his head, "what a waste of time."

The foster mother looks like she wants to argue and the teens look like they're about to start calling Shiro really foul names in lieu of actual protest. But Keith appears in the doorway with a backpack, a big black duffle bag and a portable radio/cassette player.

"Shiro," his voice is quiet and Shiro is reminded of years of summers, of how the first few days of hyperactive joy at his arrival would give way to a pensive, quiet Keith who had to relearn how to share space with someone else.

"Can we go now?"

Shiro nods, "Yeah, lets go."

Neither of them look back.

...

Keith paces the perimeter of Shiro's apartment like a cat learning its new space. Shiro half-expects his brother to bolt like a kitten and find a hiding spot. Except this is New York and the apartment is small and cramped and the only hiding space to be had is the fire escape. It's a studio and it reminds Shiro a little uncomfortably of the summer they spent living in an abandoned shack in the desert. Of how the dust and sand would cling to everything, hiding in the floorboards and the sheets and the creases of your skin.

Keith tosses his bags onto the couch and says, "I guess I sleep here," a quiet mumble at the floor, face veiled by messy hair - he never has been able to keep his cowlicks under control.

"Uh, yeah," Shiro says, rubbing at the back of his neck, "I'd give you the tour but," he shrugs, it's a studio apartment, everything but the bathroom and Shiro's fold-up bed are visible without much looking, "what you see is what you get."

Keith looks up and around at that, as if he has to confirm that he sees it all in order to get it. He has hungry eyes. He nods as he looks around. "Okay."

"Yeah?"

Keith nods again, more firmly this time, "yeah, okay."

It's a start.

…

Shiro is in his second year of nursing school and working nights at a bar downtown.

"I'm a big guy," he explains with an awkward shrug, "I can typically stop stuff before it gets too rough."

Keith listens to this with his head tipped to the side, considering. He doesn't talk much. It's like losing their mother fundamentally changed something in Keith. Three months in foster care didn't help either.

But he loves that radio. He held it in his arms the whole drive back - a drive because Shiro can't afford to fly anywhere and even when his father, awkward, shoulders hunched forward, eyes not quite meeting his son's offered to pay for Shiro's ticket to Phoenix Shiro found himself refusing. He couldn't do it; he couldn't take his father's money for this. He wasn't sure why but it felt wrong.

And he knew what it had cost his stepmother when his father went to Mom's funeral with him.

The ghost of Diana Kogane and what once was would never leave the Shirogane men and sometimes that was too much for Stella to bear.

On the road back Shiro had reached for the car stereo but a soft "Stop" from Keith had him halting and waiting while his brother yanked his backpack open and pulled out a second-hand cassette and forced it into the plastic tray, snapping it closed with finality. He fiddled with the buttons until some song by the Indigo Girls Shiro recognized but couldn't place filled the car.

"Mom's favorite band," Keith explained, looking out the window.

"I remember."

They listened to the whole tape, singing along to some of the more recognizable tunes and by the time it ran out of sound Keith's hands were flying, replacing it with The Eagles and Shiro was laughing at his brother's old-fashioned taste while they belted out 'Take It Easy' and crooned along to 'Hotel California'.

…

Keith hates school.

Shiro probably should have seen this coming.

Keith is perfectly content to spend the whole day out on the fire escape, listening to the city and reading _Great Expectations_ but god help them all if Keith had to do anything because a teacher told him to.

Keith nearly gives Shiro a stroke when Shiro finds himself called out of class one day because his brother is truant and no one knows where he is. His veins immediately fill with ice and dread. Shiro rushes home only to find Keith out on the fire escape as usual, staring at the windows of the skyscraper across the way with a pensive line between his brows.

"KEITH," Shiro roars and is slightly gratified when his brother twitches like a guilty cat and looks at him.

"The bus system is confusing," Keith says because his main defense mechanism is fighting and misleading non-sequiturs, "it was easier to get around Phoenix."

Shiro nearly bursts a blood vessel; he can feel his jaw tic. "Keith, get your ass inside right now and tell me why you're not in school." It is taking everything Shiro has not to scream at his brother right now.

Dammit, his heart won't slow down, how do actual parents do this? How does it not kill them?

Keith narrows his eyes at him but climbs inside, immediately crossing his arms and slouching. "What?"

"Why. Are. You. Not. In. School."

Keith shrugs, "I didn't want to be."

"Keith," Shiro growls.

"They don't want me there either!" Keith protests, "They think I'm too stupid or have 'discipline issues' and 'difficult personality'. Literally no one gives a fuck if I'm there or not. Actually, I'm pretty sure they like it better if I'm not there. So why the fuck go?" He glares are Shiro and Shiro can't help but remember bruised eyes and a bloody nose.

"It's all useless anyway," Keith mutters.

"Keith, you have to go to school."

"Why?!" Keith demands, "Mom didn't make me go to school. She said you learned more living life than stuck in one place."

Shiro's lips curl and he is this close to saying something he will really regret about their mother but he chokes down the words. "Mom didn't know everything."

"Mom was a fucking genius!"

"I'm not talking about Mom right now, I'm talking about you!" Shiro shouts, suddenly exhausted, the adrenaline dump of 'oh god, Keith is wandering New York City alone, what if Keith's dead in an alley somewhere, what if Keith's hurt/run away/in danger?' finally fading, "You have to graduate high school, okay? After that, do whatever makes you happy. But high school is where I draw the line. A high school diploma means you can get better jobs, maybe go to college; get into trade school, whatever. Just go to high school and get the stupid piece of paper that, hey, might make your life easier, okay? Just, please, try. For me."

Keith stares at him and Shiro wonders if it worked, if he got anywhere with this stubborn, too-smart kid and his thick skull.

"Okay," Keith finally says, eyes narrow and considering, "I'll do it. For now."

Shiro sighs and runs a hand down his face. Fine. It'll do for now.

...

Shiro is pretty sure Keith is in love with Central Park. One of Keith's first weekends in New York Shiro impulsively woke him up one Saturday morning with a brisk, "Get up, we're going somewhere cool," and thirty minutes later was dragging a still-yawning Keith onto the Subway and away.

The minute Keith saw the park his eyes got huge and he actually rocked back on his heels, one hand propped on his hip (their mom did that too - Shiro has a photo of their mom and nine-year-old Keith at a canyon, their backs to Shiro and their hands on their hips, unconsciously mimicking each other.). "Holy shit," Keith breathed, "It's so green."

Sometimes Shiro forgets his brother has never been out of the desert.

They spent the day roaming the park, stopping for hot dogs and ice cream cones and street falafel whenever they got hungry. Keith climbed thirteen different trees and for a while was just jumping from tree to tree while Shiro yelled at him that he was insane and could he please come down before Shiro had a heart attack?

A very nice officer on horseback finally asked Keith to please get down and Keith, to Shiro's consternation, actually obeyed with no argument. The officer went on his way with a wry smile and a shake of his head and Shiro gave his brother a look.

"What?" Keith shrugged, "he's just a guy doing his job, why would I make his life harder? He was really nice about it too."

Shiro stared at his brother and shook his head, "You've got layers, kid, lots of weird layers."

Keith snorted and rolled his eyes, "Fine, see if I act like an upstanding citizen again." But he didn't fight it when Shiro threw an arm around his shoulders and ruffled his hair.

They stumbled across an amusement park some rich businessman had built for his equally rich kids and was now open for public use. It's all kiddie rides they're technically too old and definitely too tall for but they bought cotton candy and ate it sitting on a park bench, Keith perched on the back, feet propped on the seat, Shiro sitting like a normal person, both feet firmly on the ground.

"Wonder what it's like," Keith said over the sounds of little kids squeaking in delight.

"What?"

"Having your name on an amusement park. Even a little one. Knowing your dad just casually built this whole thing for you."

"Had built," Shiro corrected him, "had built for you. It's different."

"How?"

"I dunno. I guess spending money's easy? Spending time isn't."

"Yeah but if time is money..."

"I don't want to play a logic game, Keith," Shiro chuckled, "you asked me what I thought. That's what I think."

Keith was quiet for a beat before saying "it was cheesy as hell."

"Shut up. Let's keep moving."

They spent the whole day in Central Park and when they got home Keith was smiling brighter than Shiro had seen in a long time.

...

Shiro doesn't hate his stepmother. Stella is a good woman and his father loves her (not the way he loved Shiro's mother, not in that tragic, desperately devoted way and perhaps that's for the best, perhaps this quieter love is better, or at least less painful).

But she is driving Shiro mad.

"How is Keith settling in?" She asks, a tense razor-edge to her voice, vibrating like a saw, "Not getting into too much trouble, I hope? Your father says he was raised very...different."

"Keith is fine. It's an adjustment."

"Well, if you don't have enough space you might want to consider getting a bigger place, your father and I will help as much as we can...it's unfortunate this had to happen..."

Shiro is twenty-three years old. He doesn't want to be any further in his father's debt than he already is. "We're fine. Keith likes it here."

"But are you alright? It just seems like it'd be a bit...cramped. What with having another person there..."

Stella doesn't like calling Keith his brother. Shiro thinks his mother makes her uneasy, despite the two women never meeting (Shiro tries and fails to imagine that meeting and isn't sure if he wants to laugh or cringe).

"We're brothers, I think we can handle fighting over the bathroom, ma'am," Shiro says, putting some distance between them with the honorific, passive-aggressively reasserting his and Keith's bond with the comment.

It's mean - Shiro shouldn't be like this, but he's tired and he had a test today and he has a shift tonight and Keith is grimacing through his biology homework like the subject physically pains him.

"Well as long as you're fine..." Stella huffs and Shiro hears the ghost of their conversation before he took off for Phoenix.

_"You don't have to take him. It sounds like he's been placed. Foster care can be good for some children."_

_"He's my brother. I promised I'd come for him."_

_"But is it best?"_

_"I promised."_

Shiro hangs up with his stepmother feeling drained. He pours himself an extra cup of coffee and sits down heavily next to Keith. He ruffles his kid brother's hair and sees the line of tension between his shoulder- blades.

"She was talking about me again, wasn't she?" Keith asks, scratching out a paragraph response to a comprehension question. The pages of his textbook are stained and scribbled on in handwriting not his. The diagram of a cell Keith drew above his numbered responses is more detailed than the textbook’s. Although it could just seem that way to Shiro - the book's color-coded diagram is a grayish smear to his color-dead vision.

"Yeah, kiddo, she was." Shiro takes a large gulp of his coffee and regrets it. It's way too hot.

"She doesn't like me."

"She doesn't like the fact that my dad is still in love with our mom," Shiro says bluntly. He never could lie to Keith.

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Huh," Keith goes back to scrawling out lazy sentences, Shiro is pretty sure every good grade that boy gets is out of pure spite. Shiro doesn't know what Keith's biology teacher back in Phoenix said to him but Keith hates the subject and yet excels at it with a single-minded passion. "I think Mom was still kind of in love with my dad. I think she was waiting for him to come back."

Shiro takes another sip of coffee.

It still burns.

...

Apparently Keith joined a club and earned the undying hatred of half the athletic student body population without Shiro knowing. These two facts are unrelated beyond Keith coming home with a black eye, a split lip and a packet of posters for the school play on the same day.

"Can you help me hang these up?" Keith asks, holding out the posters even as Shiro sputters questions about the injuries.

"What happened to your face?!" Shiro finally manages to force out.

Keith just shrugs, "The football team was playing truth or dare at lunch. Things got out of hand."

"And you're on the football team?" Shiro is skeptical. It's not that Keith isn't athletic - he's basically bones and muscle held together by skin and attitude - but he's not really a team player and he thinks most rules are stupid.

"Nah. They dared one of the guys to kiss a drama nerd for like, five seconds, I think? I dunno, I didn't want him harassing one of the girls, so I said I bet he was too chicken to kiss me."

"So the football team beat you up?"

Rage is boiling in Shiro's chest - he wants to find that football team and beat the crap out of them for hurting his kid brother.

Keith shrugs, "I think they were mad about how much he liked it,” he puts the posters down, apparently giving up on Shiro taking them in the next century and gets some orange juice out of the fridge and pours himself a glass, "So I'm the new school slut and the new school troublemaker, my reputation is awesome."

Shiro breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, "please tell me those boys were suspended."

Keith takes a swig of orange juice and winces when the acid burns his split lip, "Probably if someone narc-ed. I'm kind of the hero of the losers now? So if someone saw them jump me after gym, then probably."

"That's it," Shiro said, "I'm calling the school."

"Why?"

"Because some asssholes can't make a game out of forcing people to kiss each other and they definitely can't beat up my kid brother up for kissing another boy. I won't allow it!"

Keith raises an eyebrow, "Gonna right all the world's wrongs, Shiro? Gonna fight all the injustice out there with what? Your stunning personality? Let me handle it."

"Keith, you're bleeding. Because some dickheads think they have the right to hurt you. That's messed up. That's wrong."

Keith looks at him with cool, assessing eyes and Shiro wonders if anyone has ever stuck up for this kid in his life. If Mom ever noticed when he came home with scrapes and bruises. If she pulled him out of school because it was easier to avoid their problems than confront them.

"Okay, call the school if it'll make you feel better," Keith says, trying to act casual, like he doesn't care, when he's watching Shiro's every move as he places the call.

After Shiro is done airing his very valid concerns in forceful, barely-polite terms he hangs up, takes a deep breath and turns back to his brother, “they will be dealt with."

Keith nods, one eyebrow arched skeptically.

"So?” Shiro says, pouring himself a glass of orange juice too, “You joined the drama club?"

Keith chokes on a laugh, “Yeah, yeah, I did.” He shakes his head, “When you get detention they either give you to the janitor to clean stuff or they give you to the drama teacher to build stuff. I got lucky, they needed people to build stuff more than they needed people to clean stuff.”

“When did you get detention?” Shiro asks. He can feel his brows furrowing – this damn kids is going to give him worry lines by age thirty at this rate.

            Keith rolls his eyes, “Whenever. I started doing stuff on purpose just to work on sets for a while. Until they stuck me on janitor duty,” he makes a face, “They don’t even teach you to mop right.”

            “There’s a right way to mop?”

            Keith gives him a very expressive ‘duh’ look, “Yeah, mop a few stages sometime. They’ll teach you have to mop right. They’re really picky. Or Ms. Kincaid is. She’s the drama teacher.”

            “So how come I never got a call from the school about your many detentions?” Shiro asks archly.

            Keith doesn’t even look shifty, the brat, “I gave them the number of the pizza delivery place instead of our home phone on the enrollment paperwork. The only accurate number on there is your cell on the emergency contact part. Y’know, just in case I’m in the hospital or the school burns down or something.”

            Shiro drops his face into his hands and groans. “ _Keith_.”

            Keith is utterly unrepentant, “And then Ms. Kincaid stops me in the hall when I’m mopping, _correctly,_ and says ‘you know you don’t have to be in detention to help out’. So I’m part of drama club now, I guess? I’m a stagehand for the show. So you should probably come. Or something. Just to admire how invisible I am as I move furniture around in the dark in all black clothing.”

            “You’ve found your dream job,” Shiro says dryly, “Professional poltergeist.”

            “Pretty much, yeah,” And Keith is grinning despite it pulling on his split lip.

…

            That night Shiro wakes up suddenly, sits bolt upright in bed and practically _jumps_ off it to shake Keith awake. “Keith. Keith. _Keith._ ”

            “What?” Keith growls.

            “You said you were the ‘new school slut’. Did Mom give you the, you know, The Talk?”

            Keith looks profoundly offended as only Keith can, “You woke me up to ask me _that_?”

            “I need to make sure I don’t fail as your guardian.”

            “Ugh. _Yes._ Of course our mother who, if you remember, got accidentally _pregnant_ with _me_ from unprotected sex gave me the _Talk_ when I was like, thirteen. You can sleep easy at night knowing I am a very safe school slut.”

            “Keith.”

            “Shiro.”          

            “I worry about you.”

            “Well, I’m gay so worry less.”

            “Yeah, it’s more of a general vague ‘what if I fuck up and your life is horrible because no one taught you how to be safe or make good choices or, I don’t know, cross the street correctly’ sort of worry. Possible teen pregnancy doesn’t really factor in.”

            “Your face is dumb. Go back to sleep.”

            “I’m trying to be a good guardian.”

            “You have done well, I bless thee as a very excellent and fretful guardian,” Keith sighs, “Now go the fuck to sleep.”

            Shiro flicks him in the middle of his forehead and Keith flips him off as Shiro trudges back to bed. Well. That went fine, right?

…

            Shiro does go to the show, and admittedly, slightly overdone adolescent performances of _The Diary of Anne Frank_ are not usually his cup of tea. But he loves the huge grin opening night puts on his brother’s face (now mostly healed of its bruises and contusions) and he is willing to admit that the set looks pretty sturdy and Keith the stagehand was very invisible.

            (Shiro has a sinking feeling that this is going to end in Keith buying even more black clothing in bulk and he’s not wrong – but it’s still worth it.)

            The next show the high school is doing is _A Christmas Carol._ “Because,” according to Keith, “not enough people were down with Chekhov at Christmastime.” Keith claims, “I still think Russian writer equals winter equals great winter play but whatever, Yuletide fun.” (Keith is turning into quite the little cynic and Shiro is trying valiantly not to laugh and hug the stuffing out of him whenever he gets particularly pretentious and absurd.)

            Keith is helping build that set too and might get to assist in props if he plays his cards right and Shiro doesn’t really get the complex politics involved in high school drama, but he’s willing to listen just to see Keith enthusiastic about something other than Central Park.

            Of course, this new passion for the stage has Keith stalking into their apartment after school one day saying “That’s it, I’m rewriting the script,” so Shiro might want to reserve judgment on this one.

            “Oh?” Shiro looks up from his own homework, his head foggy and frustrated with staring at the computer screen for too long. His inability to see color makes the internet a trial some days. His eyes are very tired.

            “Well, actually, I’m writing a new one,” his brother announces, starting a fresh pot of coffee and pulling…three packets of ramen noodles out of the cabinet.

            “What?” Shiro’s still not tracking.

            “The script they have is garbage, totally strips the language of any nuance. Completely neuters the story, removes nearly all of the wit and humor of the original Dickens story. I mean, come on,” Keith huffs, putting a pot of water on the stove and setting it to boil, “It’s fucking _Dickens,_ that prose is _graceful as fuck._ I will not have it defamed like this.”

            Shiro shakes his head, “So your response is to make instant noodles?”

            “This is fuel, Shiro!” Keith declares, “Fuel for this great endeavor!”

            “Keith, you’re getting weird again.” Some days Keith almost seems normal and then he does stuff like this and Shiro sees so much of their mom in Keith Shiro almost can’t believe he missed it before.

            “I’m writing my own adaptation of a Christmas Carol, Shiro.” Keith says, leaning over the island, eyes a light and dancing, like their mom’s used to when she felt like she was on the edge of a breakthrough, “and I’m doing it right.”

            “Is that legal? What about copyright?”

            “Public domain!” Keith is practically jittering in place as he stirs his pasta, “Hey, do you want some ramen?”

            Shiro sighs, “Sure.”

            “Okay.” Keith goes and gets another packet and add it to the three already in the pot, “That one’s for you.”

            The kid’s insane. How did Shiro get a crazy person for a brother?

…

            Keith stays up all night mainlining coffee and ramen and a truly regrettable amount of Red Hots and writes his own stage adaptation of a Christmas Carol. When Shiro finds him lying face-first on the breakfast bar, surrounded by mugs and bowls and empty Red Hots boxes he blinks groggily and says “I did it,” and grins like the sun.

            Shiro kind of wants to find whoever it was that told Keith he couldn’t manage it and laugh in their face really aggressively.

…

            Keith’s reworked Christmas Carol is script is, admittedly, pretty great. Shiro reads it over to check for spelling and grammar errors as his brother hovers restlessly over his shoulder like a neurotic hummingbird. The minute Shiro oks it Keith is grabbing it out of his hands and racing off to school. (He’s heavily caffeinated. Shiro is pretty sure he’ll be unconscious by lunch but at least he seems happy.)

…

            Keith is definitely unconscious by lunch. Before lunch, actually. He falls asleep standing on second base in gym class and breaks his nose for the third time when a baseball nails him between the eyes. He also has a minor concussion and Shiro almost has major heart failure when he gets the call. (Seriously, Shiro feels like he needs to join a support group – accidental parents of difficult teens anonymous – but he feels like that’s a bit too niche to actually be a thing.)

            Keith is pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, although he keeps threatening to find whoever threw the baseball and kick their ass and he’s particularly offended that the gym teacher didn’t notice he was asleep and maybe pull him off the field before something bad (i.e. airborne deathballs) happened. Shiro keeps the very groggy Keith from escaping his hospital room to hunt down the perpetrators mostly by being bigger, more reasonable and significantly stronger than the addled Keith.

            “Was it worth it?” Shiro huffs, exasperated, when he finally gets Keith back to the apartment.

            Keith _beams_ at him, letting Shiro guide him back into the studio, “Yeah, it totally was. Okay, really sleepy now.” And then he’s unconscious dead weight again and Shiro curses a blue streak and barely keeps him from hitting the floor.

            Yeah, Shiro definitely needs a support group.

…

            They do Thanksgiving at his father’s house and Shiro instantly regrets it. His stepmother is awkward; Keith is terrified but refuses to show it (which basically translates to Keith is silent and prone to unnerving staring and occasional flashes of temper when pressed) and Shiro’s father is obviously uncomfortable. (That one Shiro actually regrets – his father has done a lot for him, his father has always, always, tried to do right by everyone and this only puts him between a rock and a hard place – Shiro is old enough that he gets no vindictive pleasure out of the role reversal, just a kind of lingering sadness.)

            Shiro’s stepsiblings don’t know what to make of Keith. There are two of them, Aubrey and Anika, twenty and eighteen respectively and they spend the first few hours after their arrival obviously biting back questions and giving each other significant looks.

            Stella makes everything worse, chattering away over dinner about how well her girls are doing in college and how it’s really too bad Shiro didn’t go to school until now, he’s such a bright boy, really wasted so much of his life just wandering around like that – and it takes a few quiet words from Shiro’s father about his military service to shut her up.

            “So how old are you…Keith?” Aubrey tries to cover up her mother’s faux pas by changing the subject. Stella’s not a bad woman, Shiro reminds himself; she just puts her foot in her mouth when she’s uncomfortable. Badly. She puts her foot in her mouth badly.

            “Fifteen,” Keith says. He’s shrinking in on himself, making himself seem smaller, trying to take up less space, while tensing his body, readying himself to spring up and fight if he needs to.

            “So what grade are you in?” Anika picks up her sister’s line of questioning, trying to fill the silence with small talk.

            “I’m a sophomore.”

            “Do you like school?”

            Keith shrugs and that’s not Shiro’s brother. That’s not bright, exuberant Keith who obsesses over Dickens and junk food and loves Central Park. Shiro’s heart aches a bit.

            “Sorry, we’re kind of burnt out from the drive,” Shiro says, and it’s true, it’s a long way to go from New York to Virginia, “We ran out of music halfway through so Keith just read _Tale of Two Cities_ out loud until my brain was as tired as the rest of me.” He gets a polite chuckle out of that and a slight loosening of Keith’s shoulders.

            “It was that or Shakespeare.”

            “I’m pretty sure I can understand Dickens a little bit better than the Bard, kiddo.”

            “You’re smarter than you think you are.”

            “It’s not about being smart it’s about the stupid accents you do. Makes it impossible to follow.”

            “That’s the point of Shakespeare!” Keith protests, some light coming back to his eyes, “Doing the voices!”

            “No, the point of Shakespeare is gory deaths and sneaky sexual puns.”

            “Mom used to do the best voices,” Keith protests, “Especially in the comedies.”

            “You were way too young for some of those.”

            “Eh,” Keith shrugs, “I’m a ‘bastard begot’, aren’t I? Seems kind of fitting.”

            “Don’t quote plays I can’t remember at me,” Shiro groans theatrically, around a laugh and it’s only when Keith is chuckling in return that they realize that everyone else at the table is just watching them uncomfortably.

            Shiro is hoping Keith doesn’t notice, but of course he does and is right back in his shell just like before.

            “Well,” Anika says awkwardly, “Did everyone see the game last night?”

            They make stilted conversation about football for the rest of the meal and Keith is dead quiet.

…

            Shiro finds his father out on the patio again. He’s not smoking, but his face is wreathed by steam from his breath. It’s cold.

            “Hey, Dad.”

            Shirogane nods at him, “She doesn’t mean any harm.”

            “I know.”

            “Your brother. He looks like your mother.”

            “Yeah.”

            “He’s a good kid,” Shirogane surprises him. Shiro turns to look at him but his father isn’t facing him, he’s watching the stars, “You need to stop worrying about me, Takashi.”

            “What?”

            “You mother and I…we weren’t ever going to be. If there’s such a thing as ‘star-crossed’ we were it. But I loved her, probably too much. But it’s the past and it’s gone. I’m sorry if we’ve hurt you but I’m not sorry you came to be, you understand, son? Being your father has been a great gift. Just like I think being that kid’s brother has been a gift to you.”

            Shiro finds himself smiling slightly, “Dad. Did you just make a star-crossed pun?”

            Shirogane doesn’t respond, but the corners of his lips curl up ever so slightly.

            “Because Mom was obsessed with aliens…? You made a pun. My image of you is irrevocably changed. You made a pun. It’s the end of the world as we know it. My father just made a pun and told me he’s proud of me. Is this the finale of a heartwarming family dramedy? Are there cameras I should know about?”

            “Shut up, kiddo,” Shirogane says gruffly, but he’s smiling.

…

            “Your dad is pretty cool but can we do Christmas our way?” Keith asks, slouching deep into his coat and seat in Shiro’s car on the way back to the city.

            “Yeah, kiddo. We can do Christmas our way.”

            “Good. Because your stepmother was talking about church and apparently there are rules and I don’t understand any of them.”

            Shiro chuckles, “Oh you feral desert child.”

            “Shut up.”

            Yeah, they’re okay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is again taken from 'Unsteady' by the X Ambassadors.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Unsteady' by the X Ambassadors  
> First chapter title from 'Human' by Christina Perri


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